What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-24061: GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Vulnerability
- Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2026-01-26
- EPSS: 99.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2026-01-21 · updated 2026-09-30
- Weakness: CWE-88
Description
telnetd in GNU Inetutils through 2.7 allows remote authentication bypass via a "-f root" value for the USER environment variable.
Affected products
- Debian Linux: 11.0
- GNU inetutils: from 1.9.3 through 2.7
References
- https://codeberg.org/inetutils/inetutils/commit/ccba9f748aa8d50a38d7748e2e60362edd6a32cc
- https://codeberg.org/inetutils/inetutils/commit/fd702c02497b2f398e739e3119bed0b23dd7aa7b
- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-inetutils/2026-01/msg00004.html
- https://redteam.ae/blog/cve-2026-24061-inetutils-telnetd-root-bypass
- https://www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/20/2
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/20/8
- https://www.vicarius.io/vsociety/posts/cve-2026-24061-detection-script-remote-authentication-bypass-in-gnu-inetutils-package
- https://www.vicarius.io/vsociety/posts/cve-2026-24061-mitigation-script-remote-authentication-bypass-in-gnu-inetutils-package
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/22/1
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/01/msg00025.html
- https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2026-24061
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